Fry is still making biting comments about Bender's abandonment, as when Leela echoes Silicon Red: "You can't write a real folk song about experiences you haven't had." Fry interjects, "You should write a song about a heartless robot who leaves his best friend to be murdered!" Bender continues to ignore him, and Fry becomes increasingly agitated. Zoidberg suggests that Bender go work on "the railroad" in order to have the experiences necessary to be a folk singer. In the Rusty Rail, a bar on "the wrong side of the tracks," Bender meets Big Caboose, "a steel-drivin' man workin' the Trans-Universal line." Bender sees Big Caboose, who actually a robot, not a man, as exactly the kind of exciting personality that can be used in a good folk song. Caboose protests that he is nothing special.

+

+

As Caboose introduces Bender to his colorful acquaintances, Bender takes notes so he can use these people as characters in his song. At the work site, Bender's job is to lead the singing of the laborers and drink cocktails. After living this grueling life for a while, he begins to create his song. By the time Fry and Leela arrive at Bender's railroad camp to deliver explosives, Bender's song includes the main character, the Jezebel, and the rambler whom she runs to. Fry is still angry at Bender, and when he makes a mean comment, Bender adds a verse for Fry. It tells how Bender needed help to escape the angry Caboose, but Fry, still holding a grudge, refuses to help.

+

+

Bender is just adding the verse where his main character begins his quest to avenge himself on the rambler when Caboose bursts in and eagerly introduces Bender to his fiancee. She flings herself at Bender as soon as Caboose leaves the room. Bender and the fiancee, have sex. Bender is inspired to add another verse to his song. Foreshadowing later developments, the fiancee reveals that her name is Jezebel. Bender sees this as a lucky coincidence, not realizing its real significance.

+

+

While Fry and Leela hang out at Fry's house, Caboose, who was last seen near the railroad camp far from Earth, bursts in the door with a shotgun in his hands saying that he is here to shoot Bender down for sleeping with Jezebel. At this point, Fry and Leela realize that Bender's song is also playing out in real life. Back at camp, Bender has the idea for his hero to run over the rambler with a train, rather than shooting him. When Bender has this thought, his transmitter sends a train image from Bender's file system to the 3-D printer, and the printer begins to fabricate a train.

+

+

Back at camp, just as Bender is saying goodbye to Jezebel, Big Caboose crashes through the wall in the train from the printer and tells Bender that he has come to run him down.

Plot

Act I: "Take him down to processing while I stay here and get hooted at."

The Planet Express Discount Prisoner Transfer crew are transferring Dr. Brutaloff, a super villan with Freddy Kruger-style finger-knives, to Elevenworth Variable Security Prison. The Hans Solo-style carbonite encasing Brutaloff occasionally emits small jets of vapor. Fry fears that this is a sign of Brutalof being conscious and therefore dangerous, but Leela dismisses it as "the carbonite thawing slightly". Conveying their cargo to its destination at the prison, Bender spies Silicon Red, "the universe's greatest folk singer" at the prison's prisoner discharge office, retrieving his belongings and preparing to depart. Bender suddenly remembers his "lifelong dream of being a folk singer" and abandons Fry to chase down Silicon Red. As soon as Bender leaves, Brutalof escapes from his casing and causes considerable injury to Fry.

Bender catches up to Silicon Red and takes a picture of Red's guitar, with the intention of using a 3-D printer to create a perfect duplicate. With this duplicate, Bender believes he will be a "famous folk singer". Dr. Beeler finds the image of the duplicated guitar in Bender's file system. He then turns a crank in Bender's compartment of mystery that causes Bender's components to wirelessly transmit the image to the printer. The process of fabricating the guitar takes four to five hours. Bender can next be found walking around Planet Express wearing a flannel shirt and playing his guitar.

Fry, mostly encased in carbonite after being attacked by Dr. Brutaloff, observes Bender's antics for a moment and then repeatedly and sarcastically scolds Bender about being abandoned. Bender dismisses Fry with, "Meh, you're always getting frozen in stuff."

When the crew challenge Bender, saying that he doesn't know enough about folk music to be successful, he explains his analysis of "every folk song in the universe": 36% of the songs include a main character with a certain set of characteristics, 75% of the songs include a bad-hearted woman who cheats on the main character, etc. Bender uses this information as a formula for creating his own folk songs. He crashes a performance by Silicon Red and performs one of his songs while Red is distracted, billing himself as "Ramblin' Rodriguez". The audience hates it, and Red explains that Bender's song is insincere. He sends Bender away and says, "Don't come back 'til you've lived a life worth singin' about!"

Act III

Fry is still making biting comments about Bender's abandonment, as when Leela echoes Silicon Red: "You can't write a real folk song about experiences you haven't had." Fry interjects, "You should write a song about a heartless robot who leaves his best friend to be murdered!" Bender continues to ignore him, and Fry becomes increasingly agitated. Zoidberg suggests that Bender go work on "the railroad" in order to have the experiences necessary to be a folk singer. In the Rusty Rail, a bar on "the wrong side of the tracks," Bender meets Big Caboose, "a steel-drivin' man workin' the Trans-Universal line." Bender sees Big Caboose, who actually a robot, not a man, as exactly the kind of exciting personality that can be used in a good folk song. Caboose protests that he is nothing special.

As Caboose introduces Bender to his colorful acquaintances, Bender takes notes so he can use these people as characters in his song. At the work site, Bender's job is to lead the singing of the laborers and drink cocktails. After living this grueling life for a while, he begins to create his song. By the time Fry and Leela arrive at Bender's railroad camp to deliver explosives, Bender's song includes the main character, the Jezebel, and the rambler whom she runs to. Fry is still angry at Bender, and when he makes a mean comment, Bender adds a verse for Fry. It tells how Bender needed help to escape the angry Caboose, but Fry, still holding a grudge, refuses to help.

Bender is just adding the verse where his main character begins his quest to avenge himself on the rambler when Caboose bursts in and eagerly introduces Bender to his fiancee. She flings herself at Bender as soon as Caboose leaves the room. Bender and the fiancee, have sex. Bender is inspired to add another verse to his song. Foreshadowing later developments, the fiancee reveals that her name is Jezebel. Bender sees this as a lucky coincidence, not realizing its real significance.

While Fry and Leela hang out at Fry's house, Caboose, who was last seen near the railroad camp far from Earth, bursts in the door with a shotgun in his hands saying that he is here to shoot Bender down for sleeping with Jezebel. At this point, Fry and Leela realize that Bender's song is also playing out in real life. Back at camp, Bender has the idea for his hero to run over the rambler with a train, rather than shooting him. When Bender has this thought, his transmitter sends a train image from Bender's file system to the 3-D printer, and the printer begins to fabricate a train.

Back at camp, just as Bender is saying goodbye to Jezebel, Big Caboose crashes through the wall in the train from the printer and tells Bender that he has come to run him down.

Production

On 27 January2012, assistant director Aimee Steinberger commented that she could not go to the FOX-lot screening of the first full-color animation for "7ACV01"[1] due to her work on this episode.[2] On 14 February 2012, she said that the animatic for the episode was "done" and would be screened "[on the next day] at the FOX lot".[3] On the next day, she stated that she thought that it had gone "pretty well".[4]

As late as 8 January 2013,[5] it was revealed[6] that the title "Forty Percent Leadbelly", which had been, in February 2012, added to the Copyright Catalog[7] and said by show writerEric Rogers to be the title of something "supergood",[8] was the episode's title.

On 12 April 2013, a preview clip for the episode was released during a HuffPost Live interview with Futurama writer Patric Verrone, showing Bender using the help of Dr. Ben Beeler to bring a guitar image stored in his file system into reality by use of a large 3D printer, the Make-O-Matic. The air date for the second half of season 7 was also revealed.[9]

When Bender declares that he will duplicate the guitar, Silicon Red states that "with all Salmonella and me been through, her sound is unique". This may be a reference to Stradivarius violins, as no modern copy has been able to truly replicate their "perfect" sound.

On Bender's desktop, there is an image of a cat hanging on to a tree branch with "HANG IN THERE, DUMBASS" written on it, a reference to the "hang in there, Baby" poster.

Bender's address bar reads "C:\BENDER_2716057". 2716057 is Bender's serial number, established in "The Lesser of Two Evils".

When Dr. Beeler accesses Bender's main drive in his file system, two folders can be seen within it, "Main Personality" and "Penguin Personality", a reference to when Bender was rebooted in penguin mode in "The Birdbot of Ice-Catraz".

Funnily enough, his main personality file has a memory size of 3 MB, whereas his penguin personality has a memory size of 150 MB.

Quotes

[Bender has the rotating image of a guitar projecting from his eyes. He and Ben Beeler are looking at it.]Ben Beeler: Using my fancy technology, I can make an exact copy of this guitar.[Ben Beeler points to the copy.]Bender: Tell me Dr. Beeler, will I need to threaten you?Ben Beeler: Not at all! You see nowadays, we can take a unique and beautiful object, and easily reduce it to a formula for mass production! I call the process: science!

[A large 3D printer-like device called the Make-O-Matic begins to create a guitar downloaded from Bender's memory.]Ben Beeler: By laying down layer after layer of nano plastic, it can turn your wildest dreams into ordinary reality!Bender: Witchcraft! Sorcerer! Neat.

Bender: I failed at my life-long dream again. How can I be so bad at everything I try, and still be so great?

Fry: You know my favourite part of your song? The part where it ended.[Fry laughs.]

Alien-language sightings

Time: 08:52Location: Fence next to The Rusty RailLanguage: AL1Translation: WILCOT WAS HERE

Appearances

This list may be incomplete!

The following list may be incomplete and requires revision. You can help the project by determining whether or not this list is incomplete. (If it is incomplete, please either complete it or remove the "sure" parameter. If it is complete, remove the notice altogether.)